


In the Presence of the Gods

by sarai377



Series: Chrobin Week 2015 [5]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Amnesiac Chrom, Angst, F/M, Princess Robin, Role Reversal AU, Sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 09:01:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5410904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarai377/pseuds/sarai377
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Princess Robin discovers her father wants to sacrifice the wounded amnesiac with the mark of Naga on his arm, she rescues him from the dungeons.</p><p>Role Reversal AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Presence of the Gods

**Author's Note:**

> I'm treating Grima and Naga a little bit differently for this story - there is only one avatar for each god (so Emmeryn doesn't have the mark of Naga on her forehead), and there is more of a "two halves of the same whole" theme for the deities, as well. I hope I've explained everything else sufficiently in the writing, but please let me know if something doesn't make sense/you want more clarification.
> 
> A big thank you to Arihime, who gave me a thorough beta read about a week ago, and really helped walk through some of the problems I was having with an earlier draft. (Your suggestions were very helpful!)

Robin watches the man who will someday kill her bleed in her father’s dungeon. He has a wound beneath his hair, and he hasn’t awoken since she found him in the desert this morning. Tharja watches disapprovingly, tome in hand, as Robin crouches beside him. His arms are tied up above his head, his right sleeve and the right side of his shirt shredded by what look like claw marks, exposing the exalted mark beneath his sleeve. There are deep angry gouges along his torso, as well. He would be in agony if he were conscious, but her father won’t let any of the healers near him.

Robin shouldn’t be here, but she feels drawn to him. He’s dangerous - the birthmark on his skin labels him Naga’s scion, her avatar-made-flesh. A piece of the goddess resides in him, just as part of Grima lingers on in Robin. Father wants to exterminate him for that mark, but that thought fills Robin with such dread.

This man was born with that mark - if he should be eliminated for it, then perhaps she should be as well. The god and goddess are said to be powerful beings, each able to bring ruin upon the world. Their powers have been sealed for centuries.

Robin has studied the ancient texts for years, ever since learning what she was, and she understands her god better than anyone else alive. Only a few of her companions believe as she does – that Grima and Naga must stay equal and opposite. Up to the moment she met Naga’s avatar in the desert, she didn’t really understand it… but now, she feels something deep within, looking on his slack face. If he dies… she will have a chance to bring Grima to his power – and vice versa.

Grima could easily bring ruin upon the world, if not for Naga to keep the balance. The gods love each other – but they are constantly in conflict. Order and disorder - Naga and Grima.

The two halves of the same whole.

It’s no wonder that Robin wants to be near this man. She can’t help herself, not when his magic calls to hers. There is a subtle magic emanating off his body, even as he sits there unconscious.

She reaches out and traces his mark, ignoring Tharja’s low warning.

When she touches the prisoner, he rouses, wincing in agony. Blue eyes squint open, pain-filled and confused, and he tugs at the chains on his hands in confusion.

“I want to help you,” she tells him, sitting back on her sandaled heels and waiting to see what he will do.

“You,” he croaks, and stares at her. “I know you.”

“Do you? I rescued you from the desert,” she says.

“No… I saw you in a dream…” His lips press together, and she has a feeling it was not a good dream. He twists his hands and exhales in pain. Robin reaches for the cup of water she brought, and helps him take little sips, running her hand through his hair.

“May I heal you?” she asks, setting the glass down.

Breathing heavy, he agrees, and Tharja hands her the kit.

She works quickly, aware that her father will not be pleased when he finds out. He won’t harm her, because she is Grima’s avatar, but he could still make her life miserable for defying him in this.

“Do you remember how you ended up unconscious in the desert?” Robin asks the man, after she helps him drink an elixir. His hair is soft against her fingers as she holds his head, and she pulls her hand away reluctantly.

He rests his head back against the cold stone wall and sighs as the potion eases some of the inflammation and pain. “No, I don’t.”

“Do you know your name?” She strips his shirt open, baring a healthy swathe of well-muscled chest, and pulls the shredded material back from his wounds.

He hisses and twists away as she presses a bandage to the slashes on his torso, but he can’t go very far. He doesn’t answer her question until she’s moved on to the wound beneath his hair.

“No,” he growls. “I don’t remember. Why are you helping me?”

She gives him a smile. “Because we are alike, you and I.” She pauses and raises her marked hand to him. Normally Robin doesn’t show strangers her mark, but this is no stranger. She feels like she’s known him her whole life, almost - although she doesn’t even know his name.

He stares at it a moment, and then frowns at her. She can tell he’s scraping the emptiness of his mind, struggling to recall something, anything.

With efficiency, she bandages the wound on his scalp, and then looks him over with a critical eye. He is silent and thinking hard.

“Chrom,” he says, squinting his bright blue eyes at her, as she dabs at his forehead with some wet gauze, to remove some of the caked-on blood.

“What’s that?” she asks almost absently.

“My name…”

Robin stops, her eyes widening with surprise.

“It’s Chrom.”

~*~

Robin does not believe in coincidences - a man, blessed by Naga, named Chrom… their prisoner is the missing Ylissean prince.

Stolen from his cradle as a baby, the first-born prince was now missing for nearly twenty years. The Exalt, mad with grief at his loss, had accused Plegia of the kidnapping. When the child didn’t resurface, tensions between the two nations rose steadily. On the day Robin turned seven, Ylisse’s army crossed Plegia’s border, and war began. Robin had lived in fear that a reciprocal kidnapping was coming for her – but it never happened, and after Plegia lost the war and reparations were made, the missing prince had faded from memory.

But not from everyone’s memory. Enough Plegians still remember the war, the deaths, the sacrifices the country offered to gain uneasy peace. Robin remembers the fear as she huddled in her mother’s rooms the day the Plegian capital fell to the Exalt Enric and his men. She remembers watching her father bend the knee, and how terrified she’d been thinking the stern-faced Exalt would kill all of them.

Validar has not figured out the treasure - the _opportunity_ \- he has in his dungeon yet. He doesn’t know, for otherwise he wouldn’t have left the man unguarded. Robin will not let her father learn it.

She’d left the prince in the dungeon to rest, and told him to keep his name a secret. It seems like he trusts her, for the same reason she trusts him - a reason she can’t explain or justify, but feels deep within her gut. He completes her, and that is enough.

If her father finds out he has the Ylissean prince in his custody - there would be a public execution, a sacrifice to Grima, and a statement of defiance to Ylisse, of a kind that Plegia had only dreamed of. Validar would murder this man with no regrets, and call himself a hero as he does.

She shudders, thinking of Chrom’s body broken on the sands before the great dragon skull, his lovely eyes gone cold and staring.

A plan forms in her mind.

“Tharja,” she says to her mostly-silent companion. The black-haired mage steps up beside her, listening intently. Robin whispers, “I won’t let Father harm him.”

Tharja’s eyes widen. “What do you want to do?”

“I want to get him out of here.”

“It will be dangerous…” Tharja says, but after seeing the determination in Robin’s eyes, she sighs. “I’ll talk to Henry.”

~*~

Getting him out of the dungeon is easier than she imagined. Henry provides a suitable distraction, and Robin’s father focuses elsewhere. She and Tharja get the still-injured Chrom up on a horse, and then they are traveling swiftly through the Plegian desert, away from her father. It doesn’t ease her fear, though - her father has spies everywhere, and she knows he will eventually put things together, and realize what she had done.

But as days go by and their little group journeys undiscovered, she relaxes a bit. It doesn’t help that she’s distracted by Chrom. As they travel, she tells him everything, little by little. Politics, her life in Plegia, their deities, and what she knows of Ylisse and his family. There are no secrets that Robin would keep from him, and they grow closer and closer as the days turn into weeks.

Tharja rolls her eyes behind them when Robin talks for hours, but Chrom soaks up as much of her knowledge as he can. He can’t remember anything except his name, and the secrets surrounding his kidnapping are locked away with the rest of his missing memories.

Robin has started to sense where he is, even when he is out of sight. That curious mix of danger and comfort calls to her, and judging by the way Chrom looks at her when he thinks she isn’t paying attention, he feels it too. They start sleeping side by side, and Robin wakes up in the morning with his hand clasped tight around hers. It gives her chills, but she never asks him to stop, never turns away.

His favorite subject is their deities, and Robin has studied Grima and Naga extensively, so she has lots of knowledge to share. She shares the few precious books she brought with him, and Chrom devours them by firelight and starlight.  

Late one night, lying next to each other out in the cold Plegian night, Robin points out the stars that make up Naga’s Smile, to the east, and beside them, Grima’s Fire. The constellations share a star, the brightest one in the night sky.

Silence surrounds them, comfortable and close, and then Chrom asks, “Why did you take me out of that dungeon, Robin?”

“My father… wanted to kill you for your mark,” she admits, turning onto her side and looking at him. The starlight casts his face and hair in silver light, and his eyes flicker as he shifts onto his elbow. “A worthy sacrifice to Grima.”

Chrom rests his cheek in his palm. The way his eyebrows come together in concern is charming, and she has to resist reaching out and caressing his cheek. “Why?”

“Because of what we are.” She points to his mark. “Because we are beholden to different gods. Because…” Robin trails a finger across her own mark. “Because we balance each other, and my father does not want that balance. He doesn’t understand, just as most Ylisseans don’t understand - the gods are not meant to be by themselves. Grima needs Naga, and Naga needs Grima. Even if our gods aren’t aware that they need each other. He wants Grima to return to his power, without Naga at his side.”

“Well, we had better never meet up with your father again,” he says. Robin’s eyes fly up from her mark to his face, and then he realizes what he’s said. Apologetic, he asks, “Are you okay with that?”

After a moment, she nods. “I am. To protect you, I’d do anything.”

Chrom studies her for a moment, and then leans in. His breath whispers across her lips, his silver-cast eyes staring intently into hers. “I feel the same way. I sense you, the way I’ve never sensed anyone else. And I know I would jump in front of an arrow to protect you. Is this… feeling... because of what we are?”

It is. Robin nods, for she can’t trust herself to open her mouth.

Things pass between them, half-formed thoughts flickering behind their connected gazes, and then a heavy feeling of dread settles in. Robin feels they are tied together by the blessings of far-distant gods, who hold in their joined hands life and love, death and pain.

She sighs, and leans back to stare up at the sky.

~*~

Robin leads them to the great library in Ylisstol. She is terrified that Chrom will be discovered, or that he will want to go back to his people, but they need more knowledge. Late one night, with candles and Henry’s faint snores surrounding them, Robin looks up to find Chrom staring at her.

“You’re searching for a way to release us from our marks,” he says, and sits down beside her. His tone is querulous, and she knows the question hidden in his statement before he even asks it aloud.

Robin smiles without an ounce of cheer. “You know why.” They have never spoken of that painful dread, but she knows when it weighs heavy on him. It lurks around them like a dark cloud, and the air feels saturated with it.

“Do you think… there’s a chance?”

She turns the dusty book toward him, and flips back several pages to a full-color image of a golden shield with five gemstones in it. “If there is any chance, it lies with this object.”

“The Fire Emblem,” he reads, and then narrows his eyes. “That’s why we’re here in Ylisstol.”

“Chrom…” Robin leans toward him and takes his hand, which is gripping the corner of the book tight. He jumps at her touch, and she swears for an instant she sees a green glow deep in his eyes. “Do you want to go back to your family? You don’t have to stay with me.”

“No. They aren’t my family, not any longer.” He twines his fingers through hers, eyes staring intently down at their clasped hands. After a moment, he looks up at her. “You’re my family, Robin. I wouldn’t be alive, if it wasn’t for you.”

She clicks her tongue softly in annoyance. “You don’t have to stay with me because you feel indebted to me.”

He shakes his head. “It’s not that, Robin. I feel you, here-” He thumps a hand to his chest, his heart, and pins her with that gaze. He’s close enough that she can see her own magical glow reflected in the convex curve of his eyes. His magic radiates out to her, running along her skin like the warmth of a fire on a cold Plegian night. Softer, he continues, “Nothing else matters as much as being with you.” He squeezes her hand tighter, and she realizes it’s her right hand, the marked one, hidden beneath the fingerless glove.

“I feel the same way,” she admits, her thoughts dark. _We are already too deep._

But she places her other hand on his. His expression is charming and open, and she can’t help but smile back. “We have to get the Fire Emblem.”

~*~

“Robin,” Chrom whispers into the approaching dusk.

One week after they obtained the Fire Emblem, the two of them sit by the sea, listening to the waves crash against the shore. Carrion Isle, they call it, but it is a beautiful place. They have retreated here to recover from their near-defeat in Ylisstol.

Tharja and Henry sleep back at the campfire, along with their new recruit Gaius, who Chrom befriended during the mission. They will depart together from the port in the morning, fleeing across the sea to find the missing gemstones.

Robin still feels anxious when she thinks about what they went through to get the Emblem from the Ylissean castle - how many unknowns, how much danger they would have been in had they been caught. She would have been put to death, most likely, and Tharja and Henry soon after; and Chrom, if they had recognized him, would have been welcomed home by his true family.

The Ylisseans had fought bravely to protect the artifact. Chrom walks with a limp after nearly losing his leg to a well-placed axe, and Robin is recovering from occasional dizzy spells due to a brutal Elthunder cast. With no healer among them, they are forced to make do with potions and bandages.

But they managed to steal the Emblem, and it is safe in the satchel at her side.

As the moon rises across the water beyond him, Robin watches Chrom for any tell-tale signs of pain, but if he hurts it is not reflected on his face.

“What you said, about us… how we’re two halves of a whole...” His hand snakes out to wrap around hers. “I feel it too.”

Robin smiles at the Ylissean prince, and he leans in. Her heart beats faster, almost tripping over itself.

His lips press against hers, uncertain of her response, but absolutely set in what he wants. When she opens her mouth to him, he grips her forearms, his tongue dancing along the inside of her teeth, darting against her own tongue.

She has wanted this for so long, and it sets her head spinning. Robin hopes it isn’t just the magic drawing him to her like a moth to a candleflame.

Their eyes reflect scarlet and green across their softly glowing skin. They stand and remove each other’s clothes with sure, confident motions, and then Chrom backs her against a soft-barked tree. 

Chrom slips inside of her, and she throws her head back with a cry, feeling complete and whole. He cries out as she wraps her legs around his hips. When they make love, it is like fireworks in her body. His magic calls to hers, and hers to him - they fit together seamlessly.

Feathers brush her skin - wings burst from her back, fanning out around the narrow tree, the manifestation of their powers together. His larger, leather wings unfurl behind him with a crisp snap like fabric in the breeze, and he curves them around Robin. His glowing eyes dance with light like emeralds.

“You complete me,” she breathes against his neck.

“I love you,” he pants, and the words bring tears to her eyes.

In the aftermath of lovemaking, their wings recede and their eyes and skin stop glowing. He cuddles up against her chest, crying softly, and she knows he feels that doom hovering just out of reach. They shouldn't do this, but she can't help it. That day she came across him in the desert, she knew what he was. Her body had trembled in his presence, and she had known.

He is going to be her end, but he completes her.

She kisses his hair until he calms and falls asleep, but she stays awake, gazing at the stars and holding on to the man she loves with every bit of her soul.

~*~

Chrom holds up the gemstone, studying it curiously. The light from the fireplace behind him glitters off the stone. 

“Sable - the last one,” he breathes, and darts his eyes back to Robin. He gives a cautious grin, but his unease is obvious to Robin. The same feeling coils in her stomach, making her edgy.

“That was no fun,” Henry complains, kicking his feet from where he sits on the table in their small rented room. “We didn’t get to use our new spells, even!”

“It was too easy,” Tharja comments with an especially dark tone, glaring at Henry.

“We should go,” Gaius says, pulling the lollipop from his mouth. “I’ve done a lot of jobs like that before, and this one feels wrong.”

They had obtained the last stone from under Validar’s nose. Robin knows the Plegian castle like the mark on the back of her hand, and getting in to obtain the final gemstone had been easy with all of the secret passages. They hadn’t been caught, and their plan had gone without a hitch. Something is off about it, but Robin can’t put a finger on the problem.

Tharja turns to Robin. “I agree with Gaius. It’s dangerous, and we should leave tonight.”

Robin studies the gemstone between Chrom’s fingers. “We should. Chrom, here.”

She fishes the Emblem out of its pouch and hands the heavy metal shield to him. He stares at it reverently for a moment, and his hand shakes as he raises Sable to its setting. The Fire Emblem clicks as the missing stone is inserted, but nothing else happens.

“Is there something wrong?” Chrom asks, turning the heavy shield around.

Robin frowns, and then hands Chrom the case to slide the Emblem into. “We need to go - we can figure it out later. Henry, would you go get our horses?”

Henry rises and the door clicks shut behind him. Tharja looks at Robin, sitting back in the chair. “What will we do now?”

“Go somewhere far away,” Robin says. “And figure out how the Emblem works.”

Chrom looks up. “Somewhere with a large library.”

In spite of her unease, Robin smiles. “I like being well-informed. Maybe we’ll go to Ferox next.”

Tharja watches Chrom, a muscle in her jaw twitching. Robin notes this reaction and the Dark Mage’s disapproval. Tharja and Henry have never warmed to Chrom the way Robin has, and she should never have expected them to. Robin feels him in her head, on her skin… they don’t know what she knows about his soul, how much she trusts him. Maybe she would be right to fear him, the way Tharja fears for Robin… but she can’t.

After a moment, Tharja turns those dark eyes to Robin, and then bows her head. She will obey Robin in this, as in everything else.

~*~

Chrom holds the reins of Robin’s horse, allowing her to mount up. She pauses, hands on the saddle, and looks over her shoulder. Something feels off, strange, and her blue-haired lover narrows his eyes, looking at a point above her head for a moment. His eyes flash with green, and then return to dark. The torches and lanterns surrounding them flicker as the wind shifts around them.

“Robin!” Tharja yells.

A dark cloud appears behind Chrom, and his eyes widen. He starts to turn toward that cloud.

“Chrom!” Robin cries, but they are both too slow. Magic bursts from the roiling darkness and strikes at Chrom, tossing him to the ground. He cries out, staggering to his hands and knees.

Robin watches, stunned, as her father congeals out of the darkness.

“Hello, daughter,” he greets with a smile that makes her shiver.

Robin’s pulse is fast and frantic in her throat, and she’s momentarily speechless in his presence. Every fiber of her being is shouting that this is a trap – that he’d planned this all along.

She shakes off her shock and reaches for her tome. The shouts of the others fall away from her. Tharja and Henry manage to shoot some magic toward Validar, but he simply teleports away from it.

Robin focuses on the magic in her Thoron tome. It whispers around her, as she readies the cast -

Her head bursts into agony, her vision flooding with scarlet. Her body falls to its knees, the tome falling from slackened fingers.

“Run all you like,” her father laughs, “You can’t escape fate.”

 _Fate –_ the word resonates across her.

“No,” she gasps. “Chrom- nngh…”

” _Robin_.”

Like a puppet on strings, her chin jerks up, and she’s staring at her father. With a gesture of his long-nailed fingers, Robin rises. The others are shouting at her, calling out her name, but she can’t focus on them.

 _”Bring me the Fire Emblem_ ,” his voice resonates in her head.

She does, fighting against every step, every motion. When she bends over Chrom, who lies there gasping, he speaks to her, but his words bounce off unheard. Robin wrenches the Fire Emblem from his hands and walks slowly over to her father. He accepts it and pats her on the head, and she vibrates with anger.

In that moment, with his voice in her mind and everything else in a hazy fog, she knows she will kill him.

He just laughs at her.

“Now, to set the Table for you, my daughter,” he says with a laugh, and teleports away, the Fire Emblem tight in his hands.

Robin falls to her knees, the puppet-strings cut, clutching at her aching head. Chrom grabs her, trying to pull her to his chest, but she shoves him off.

“Stay away,” she gasps, and when she looks up her eyes reflect scarlet on Chrom’s face – and his verdant glow appears in response.

“Don’t push me away, Robin,” he whispers, and when he reaches for her again, she doesn’t resist. He wraps his arms around her and she buries her face in his neck. “We’re in this together… We’re two halves of the same whole.” He helps her to her feet. Tharja, Henry and Gaius look back at them, waiting for instructions.

“What now?” Tharja asks.

“We have to get the Emblem back,” Chrom says.

Deep in her heart, Robin feels that doom approaching. They share a long glance, and he tightens his hand around hers.

“I know where he is going,” Robin says.

~*~

Validar lies vanquished at Robin’s feet, and the Fire Emblem is theirs.

Bruised and bloody, Robin turns to Chrom, who struck the final blow against Validar. She is surprised at first, and then a smile bursts across her face. They actually succeeded. She fought against her father’s control, and she didn’t fall under his command again. It was Chrom’s magic that kept her from doing it.

Chrom starts to smile back, and then that smile falters. Robin catches his arm as he stumbles. Her first thought is that her father somehow hurt him in that final blow, but she doesn’t see any new wounds.

“Chrom!” Her body races with fresh adrenaline. He sags against her, and she struggles to hold his larger form upright. Panic sets in, and that dreadful doom hovers just beyond her. “This isn’t how it ends, Chrom!”

When he raises his head, his eyes glow painfully bright, and there’s a faint smile touching his lips.

Robin knew that he would be her death someday, but she’s still surprised when he stabs her, just below her heart. His magic, which set her skin aflame with desire and made her aware of his presence, now burns into her. It doesn’t hurt, at first - and then it does. She feels… cold.

“Robin! Oh gods,” he gasps, coming back to himself in a rush. “No!”

“Chrom,” she whispers, fighting to put a smile on her face for him.

Chrom can't speak for a few moments, his eyes glistening with tears as she tries to stay afoot. The blazing magic in her chest makes each breath agony, and her lip trembles. Those wings spring from his back again, the silky, leather wings that so lovingly caressed her when they made love. He’s already changing, turning - his eyes glow, no longer sapphires, but emeralds, burning bright in his face. As her life seeps out of her, he takes it, becoming Naga’s avatar in truth.

“This is not your… your fault,” she says, and clings to his shirt. “I love you, Chrom.” He strokes her hair, tears leaking from his eyes in green and silver. Her legs give out and he sinks to the ground with her.

“Robin… a world without you is not a world I want to live in. Please... take me with you.”

He takes her marked hand and presses it against his chest. She stares at him, her body quickly going past the point of pain and into pinching numbness.

She sees starlight in his bright eyes, and it all goes hazy for an instant.

Robin knew this would happen, that first time she met him… and knowing how it ends, being here at the point where she ceases to exist… she would choose it all over again.

“Don’t leave me alone!” Chrom shakes her gently, bringing her focus back to him. He kisses her, but her mouth tastes metallic. “Please,” he whispers, his cheek wet. “Robin, please. You said we were two halves of a whole. You said we balanced each other! I don't want to exist without you.”

She reaches up and runs her cold fingers along his jaw. It is his painful eyes that change her mind. “Chrom… I love you.”

He kisses her again, pressing his lips against hers, breathing soft, barely audible words: "Please, Robin, please, don't go..."

Robin pulls her own magic, red and gold, into her palm, and forces it deep into his body. He jerks with the force of it, his eyes gone wide with shock. He pants and gasps for a few moments, dropping his face into the crook of her neck, and his wings recede back into his body.

“Chrom,” she whispers, patting his hair. “I’m so…sorry.” The numbness spreads through her body, and she looks at her fingers to see them grow transparent. His blue eyes narrow with the pain, and yet he touches her face anyway. “May we meet again -”

“In a better life,” he finishes for her. A fierce smile widens his mouth for an instant, and she smiles in response. “I love you, Robin.”

She can no longer speak, but she keeps smiling until a pale white haze coats everything.

The last thing she feels before passing into that bright darkness is Chrom's hand, tight around hers.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, and please let me know what you think!


End file.
